Captions by Ashlee Scholefield. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2016 SMOOTH ELECTRONIC MUSIC BIRDSONG Across State Highway 1 from Manukau CBD lies a neighbourhood known as The Gardens, home to Auckland Botanic Gardens and 216 acres of farmland and bush that make up Totara Park. That is massive. The Gardens ` the suburb, not the actual gardens ` is a welcoming place, and it's where I call home. I'm an Australian-born Lebanese. I moved to NZ in 2014 to pursue a career in acting, since I found the NZ to be more open to showing a variety of faces on their screens than their Australian counterparts. The Gardens is a diverse community that has made me feel welcome, and I'd love to show you guys around. In this episode of Neighbourhood, we'll find out how The Gardens came to be home to NZ's only Melkite Lebanese church. When we were subdividing, the Lebanese community starting to grow bigger and bigger, and I said to my husband, 'I want to build a church.' 'Are you`? Are you serious?' A Gardens local traces the story of her journey from Kurdistan. Coming from the Middle East, um, there's always conflict there, and that conflict has obviously extended into the Kurdish people and our villages and our homes as well. We'll explore the way the work of a sculptor from Hungary reflects her experience as a migrant. I don't think it's easy to forget the refugee status you once had, even though you were a little child, because those are very formative years. And a woman who was once classified as 'coloured' in South Africa shares a childhood treasure. In the house I lived in, after 30 years, when we did out excavations and renovations in the house, I found this in a trench at the back, and I was really shocked. I'm Tony Rahme, and this is my neighbourhood. 'NEIGHBOURHOOD' THEME The Auckland Botanic Gardens is home to 10,000 plants and attracts almost a million visitors a year. And at 64ha, it's pretty easy to get lost in here. I grew up in Bankstown, New South Wales. Bankstown has a strong Lebanese community, so I grew up as identifying as both an Aussie and Lebanese. My parents moved over from Lebanon in the '70s because of the better life opportunities Australia had to offer. My parents grew up in the same village, Ainata-Al Arz. Relax, they're not first cousins. Ainata actually means 'natural water spring', and Al Arz means 'of the cedars'. The Lebanese cedar is the ancient symbol of Lebanon, said to have been planted by God's hand. You can ask anyone from Lebanon, and they'll trace their heritage right back to their village. Where we come from is a big part of the person who we become. INTRIGUING MUSIC I think such a beautifully tended garden as the Botanic Gardens and the amount of love and enjoyment expressed by people who use it regularly ` it has the most exquisite group of people loving it and caring for it and really pushing the boundaries to make it as exciting as possible every season, and for you to spend time in those places, I mean, it really is mind food. I'm Marte Szirmay. I was born in Hungary, in Budapest, which is the capital of the country. Well, this particular work is called Seek, S-E-E-K, meaning that you look for, um, search for. And it's a very simple trick that forces you to actually try and fuse the front panel and the back panel optically to form the centre of the sculpture into a circle of completion. So I presume you could... simplify the whole matter by saying I'm looking for some harmony, some equilibrium. Now I'm retired, but I was a school teacher for over 40 years, and all along that I was also a professional full-time sculptor. I worked at two jobs for most of my life. My last memories of Hungary were so horrible I didn't actually want to go back. I don't think it's easy to forget the refugee status you once had, even though you were a little child, because those are very formative years. And I must admit, in the first days of receiving the horrors that were happening in Europe and the refugee crisis in Europe, the tears were rolling down my face. I` I couldn't` Because it was suddenly me. AMBIENT MUSIC The political situation was that Hungary was an Iron Curtain country, so we were under Russian rule, and the Hungarians don't like that. We had nothing. We walked away from everything. We had no money, nothing. I think children are the most wonderful, malleable creatures. They just fit in. Now, this` this photograph that I've got here, um, is us getting ready to leave Salzburg refugee camp to get our boat to NZ. As far as Dad was concerned, he had to get us far away from Europe as possible, and probably he couldn't have gone any further. You know, compare it to present day what's going on ` why on earth are people dying in the sea? They're getting as far away as they can, and it's the same here. INTRIGUING MUSIC The making of medallions is a very satisfying experience, because the scale is so accessible, especially when you're, you know, working long hours on big lumps of metal. And some of them are wonderfully funny, because you can be funny, because it's two-sided, and you've got a story to go with it. This is just multitask, you know, which is just a strung-out puppet, you know, and, ultimately, all these strings pulling it in this way and that way and that way, and that was actually a gift to my sister. You know, medallions should be in everybody's pockets, you know, where you can just fondle it and feel it and giggle of knowing what it is about. I will tell you a very funny story to how my attachment to NZ is. I was coming back from America, and we stopped in Tahiti. I step on the steps at the top, and I take a breath, and the tears like a tap was turned on. I was home, in the Pacific. So, to me, this is a haven, this is a lifeboat. INTRIGUING MUSIC One of my favourite writers is Gibran Khalil Gibran, and he was actually born in the village of my ancestors, Bsharri, in Lebanon, And, um, he was actually, like, my fourth cousin, because his mother was a Rahme. Funny thing about Lebanese is we don't have family trees; we actually have family forests with vines going from one tree to the next. This book is The Prophet, and it's Khalil Gibran's best work, which has been translated into over 40 different languages. You know, for me Khalil Gibran's writing is just timeless. See, a lot of people know the quote, 'If you love somebody, let them go, 'and if they come back to you, they were always yours, but if they don't, then they never were,' but not everybody knows that Khalil Gibran was the one who wrote that quote. And that quote itself just tells us that sometimes things we love can come back to us in the most unexpected ways. GENTLE PIANO MUSIC Back in South Africa in the day, we were called coloured people because of the colour of our skin. That time it was the apartheid era, so it was a sad time for us, where we as people were denied, um, living as normal citizens of South Africa. So we had to` we were classified as second-class citizens. The school that I went to when I was a little girl was just basically segregated, where people of the same colour would go, so you don't get to mix with people of other colour. Yeah, so it's quite different for me. 'I work at The Gardens School, and I work in a new entrant year one class. 'I started at the school about three years ago. 'It's a really supportive community, and I love working at the school.' I've never even thought I could teach at a school where there's people of different colour. So, yeah, I'm standing here today, in a classroom full of little 5-year-olds, teaching people of all races as a multi-cultural classroom, even a school, and I just love it. When I was born, I was born in a little house on the Cape Flats. Um, my mum was 17 at the time of my birth. Nobody actually knew that she was pregnant. She was young, she had no idea, and I think when she got involved with my father, and that` I think that was just once-off, and she got pregnant, and it was` she brought shame to the family. I had a relationship with her, but it was in and out of` she came in and out of my life. She left me with the people that took care of me, and I call them my grandparents, because even even though they weren't blood relatives, they gave me all the love and attention that I needed when my mum wasn't there. My mum would come and visit me sometime, but it would be just a visit. EMOTIONALLY: There would be no hugs involved, and... In the house I lived in, after 30 years, when we did our excavations and renovations in the house, I found this in a trench at the back, and I was really shocked, and I was thinking, 'This can't be` This can't be the bracelet that everybody was talking about.' When I picked it up and I looked at it and I saw some engraving on it, and it says 'MM' on there, and in the inside, it says '23 12 67'. It's a little gold bracelet that my mum gave me to me when I was, um, 1 year old, and, um, I always thought that it's a myth, and, um` This bracelet was lost when I was 1` like, a couple of weeks after I got it, and, um, everybody thought that maybe someone stole it or... It was just gone. I ran in to call my mum, and she talked about it, and she explained what it looked like, and this was the bracelet that I found 30 years after it got lost. After I found it, my mum came to visit me, and I showed the bracelet to her, and she looked at it, and I could see in her face that she was really happy. And she actually gave me a hug that day, so the bracelet is a symbol of a change for me and her, where she could just take me in her arms and just give me a big fat hug, and that moment I just, like, let go and I just cried, yeah. It's not just a treasure; it's a symbol of my whole life coming together. I've been married now for almost 24 years, so we're happy, we enjoy each other. It was two months after we met he asked me to marry him, so a year after we met, we got married, and, yep, it was just` he was just the love of my life. We've been through a lot, eh? Yes, we have. But it was` You know what was nice? What? Doing it all with you. Yes, I know. BOTH CHUCKLE It was so nice to have you on my journey. And it was good to be there for you all the time. Thank you for being there for me. Love you. Since moving to NZ, I've changed a lot. I've learnt to accept myself for who I am. In South Africa, you won't` Because of my upbringing, I always heard that I'm not good enough. I was never good enough. I` I never felt that I was good enough. But moving here, I made peace with that, and I am good enough. I'm here, I exist, and I love my life now. My family are descendants from the Phoenicians of North Lebanon, and we grew up in the Maronite Catholic faith. See, Maronite Catholic traditions are very similar to Roman Catholic traditions, except with a little bit of a Lebanese flavour. For instance, the Thursday before Lent was always known as Khamis El Zakara, which means the Thursday of Remembrance. Since it was the one night where getting ` for a lack of a better use of words ` 'inebriated' wasn't frowned upon, it eventually became known as Khamis El Sakara, which means Drunken Thursday. The fact that we have a Lebanese Catholic Church just down our street is an indication of how multicultural The Gardens really is. This church, Mar Elias, was originally built for the Melkite Catholic faith, which differs a little bit from the Maronite Catholic faith. But here there are no distinctions. Everybody's welcome here. SOFT, TINKLING MUSIC When I arrived in NZ, there wasn't many Lebanese people living here. Uh, maybe one or two families. But the rest of them were born in NZ from Lebanese parents, so spoke little, maybe. But to me it was good, because then I have to learn to speak English to them rather than speaking my language, which never get me anywhere. My name is Henriette Nakhle. I was born in Lebanon, and I came to NZ in 1974. We lived in Papatoe at first, and then probably about 10 years later, my husband searched to get our next step where we're gonna have a bit of land around us, like a countryside, so he found this spot here, bought it, and we start designing the house. For 30 years, we've been living here, uh, bringing up the family as well here. It's a family home. The area, The Garden, which my husband and` oh, the whole` the family ` all of us developed this area. This is the shops that we talked about creating. Here we are. We created those, part of the subdivision. Liban Superette. And there's the hospice shop also. Proud of creating something for the neighbours, the people of NZ, people who love being in a small neighbourhood, enjoying peace, uh, tranquillity. It's everything, really. Look at the lovely, um, reserve up there. This is the view that they get every morning, the people living in this area, as well. Being the developers, the city council gives you the opportunity to name the streets, and we thought what better than give them the name of some areas of Lebanon, just to implement the background of the area and who the people who developed it, so we did give them the name of Beirut, Phoenicia. It's all a blessing, really, more or less, at the end of the day. That's what I believe in. WOMAN SINGS HYMN When we were subdivding, the Lebanese community starting to grow bigger and bigger, and I said to my husband, 'I want to build a church.' 'Are you`? Are you serious?' And I said, 'Well, yes.' There's a lot of us, and we're always using the Latin church here and there. Uh, it doesn't hurt if we develop our own. We didn't just build it ourself. We were about` Maybe 15 families got together, and they're all skilled. One of them would be the builder, the other one be the electrician, the other one` And a lot of them would maybe donate. Today this is the St Elias Catholic, uh, Melkite Church at the heart of The Garden, uh, community centre, and it draws a lot of Middle Eastern people into the` this church, because it's their own language, it touches their heart when they pray, they understand every word of it. This is a Melkite Catholic church. I thought the church will draw the community together, which is the Lebanese community, plus bit of Syrian and Iraqis. And the beauty last couple of weeks, got some refugees from Middle East, and two families come to our church. Yes, it's a home to every, um, newcomer. We never look at ourselves being the most important people to do something. We're not, no. It's the work of the community as well. Everybody had, uh` put in to this. We're grateful to them. We want people to enjoy living in The Gardens. Very special neighbourhood, extremely special. It has everything in it here. Maybe other places are special too, but we find this is especially special, yes. I'm the youngest, and I'm the only boy in my family, with four older sisters. Lucky thing. (CHUCKLES) See, when I was younger, my siblings and I were called the Rahme Army, because we'd stick together, no matter what. Our parents had always taught us that if a family stays a unit, they can overcome any obstacle. In NZ, I just have my sister Rema and her husband. But we're still very connected to our family overseas. I mean, we talk on the phone almost every night, and every few months, someone will come up and stay for a visit. Yeah, I do miss my family, but I understand that separation is required to define the person who you are and that you wanna be. As Khalil Gibran once said, 'Alone and without his nest does the eagle fly across the sun.' My most sincere, vivid and colourful memories are of my childhood in the mountains of Kurdistan, and living in nature and, uh, picking wild flowers and just` just being free. And being in such a deserted place in Kurdistan, we didn't have TV, we didn't have technology, so my world, basically, was just my` our village, which was amazing. REFLECTIVE MUSIC I was born in Kurdistan. We are the world's biggest ethnic group without a free, independent nation. Kurdistan is between Iraq, Iran and Syria and Turkey. Coming from the Middle East, um, there's always conflict there, and that conflict has obviously extended into the Kurdish people and our villages and our homes as well. We became refugees, and my dad was a freedom fighter. He was known as a Peshmerga. So we ended up walking from Iran into Iraq and then into Turkey. So when we were in Turkey, we went to United Nation and said, 'We are Kurds, we have no home, we have nowhere to go, 'we have no food, no money, so please help us,' and this how, um, we ended up being refugees. Do you boys know who this is? Grandpa. This is, uh` This is my dad. This would be when he was a, um` Peshmerga. A Peshmerga, freedom fighter. Yeah, freedom fighter. This is, like, a really` probably the oldest photo of him. Um, yeah, so that's` that's him. He would be in his, I'd imagine, early 20s. Brings back really good memories, sad memories. Uh, when I say sad, um, I mean sad as in I miss them, and, um, it's` it's just so unreal that I've come so far, that I was born at this other end of the world, and I've ended up here in NZ. I'm very fortunate to be where I am. My dad told me ` because we never had a lot of food ` he said anything softer than stone is eatable, OK. So I love food, and I love cooking. Oh, I'm going to make dolma today and, um, just carving the capsicums, cos what we're gonna do is put some stuffings in there later, which is made of the, um, beef mince, uh, some of these herbs. We've got parsley, we've got some dill, we've got some spring onion and some turmeric. Then we're all gonna share it later and enjoy it. One of the things my parents faced ` obviously, aside from the language barrier ` the culture ` you know, raising their children a certain way in a Western country, uh, was hard for my parents. They were strict on a lot of things. One of them was, like, I was never allowed to go to the school ball. I wasn't allowed to have sleepovers at my friends' places. The older I got, and especially when I became a mother, I realised what they had to go through, and I've appreciated them more and have a lot of respect for my mum and dad today. I'm getting good at it. You're getting very good at it. Two tomatoes. You're fantastic. Yeah. Thank you. Um, you wanna try a capsicum as well? Sure. Same thing. Yep. The children are` I've taught them that, you know, food doesn't come easy, and what gets served in front of them has to be eaten, so they really haven't had a choice in terms of rejecting the food, even though sometimes they go, 'Oh no, not again.' I'm like, 'No, you need to eat it,' and they've grown to love it. Oh, it's Val! Hi. I'm here. (CHUCKLES) Hi, Val! Come inside. Come inside. Hey, Val. Haven't seen you in ages. Hi. NZ is the country that has given my family and plenty of other refugees a home. Like, I don't imagine living anywhere else. I've been here for about 20 years, and in that whole time, NZ has treated me very beautifully ` its people, nature. Like, I've never come across any racism or bad behaviour from people because of where I've come. Um, it's just been fantastic. We live in a damn beautiful country and just appreciate it. SOFT, UPLIFTING MUSIC I was raised to believe that a strong family breeds strong people. And when you're strong enough to not be afraid or threatened by people who are different, then they can truly become accepting. Although my family do live far away ` and trust me, I miss them ` I feel that The Gardens is a great place for me to be. The community is just so eclectic and vibrant. The fact that my neighbourhood embraces so much space and beauty, it helps me remain focused and driven on wanting to succeed. This place helps me dream big, and truth be told, I love that. Captions by Ashlee Scholefield. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2016